The small-scale structure of quantum spacetime
Christopher D. Burton

TL;DR
This paper models quantum spacetime as a statistical system of curvature fluctuations obeying thermodynamic principles, deriving Einstein's equations from entropy maximization and suggesting a new perspective on the cosmological constant and zero-point energy.
Contribution
It introduces a background-independent statistical physics framework for quantum spacetime, deriving Einstein's equations from entropy considerations and linking curvature fluctuations to cosmological phenomena.
Findings
Entropy of quantum spacetime is proportional to Einstein-Hilbert action.
Derived equations of motion match Einstein's field equations.
Suggests zero-point energy may not be problematic due to entropy-based formulation.
Abstract
Planck-scale quantum spacetime undergoes probabilistic local curvature fluctuations whose distributions cannot explicitly depend on position otherwise vacuum's small-scale quantum structure would fail to be statistically homogeneous. Since the collection of fluctuations is a many-body system, the natural explanation for their position-independent statistics is that they are in equilibrium with each other and distributed at maximum entropy. Consequently, their probability distributions obey the laws of statistical physics which enforces small-scale smoothness, prevents the homogeneity-violating diffusion found in any free quantum system, and maintains decoherence. Their entropy, calculated using the explicitly-constructed phase space of the Riemann whose statistics are derived using a background-independent graviton exchange ensemble, is proportional to the Einstein-Hilbert action…
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Taxonomy
TopicsCosmology and Gravitation Theories · Black Holes and Theoretical Physics · Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories
